Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Joe Kubert's Zorro, and More

At Western Publishing /Dell, Joe Kubert pencilled three features from
novelists: Zorro, Max
Brand's Silvertip, and Ernest Haycox's Western Marshal; and one TV
tie-in: Steve Donovan, Western Marshal. The page above is from "The
Sword of Zorro" in 1953

In the beginnings of Kubert's work on these, his
inker was tending mostly to the close-up faces and nearer figures.
Kubert's inks show on the backgrounds and distant figures. Even some of
the display lettering is Kubert's. The emanata, to use Mort Walker's
expression for the lines indicating emotion, are certainly a Kubert
tool. The point arrives where Everett Raymond Kinstler inks
mostly everything, but you can look hard enough and still see Kubert,
ghostly, underneath; see the jail and especially its sign from
"Silvertip's Trap" in 1959.

The only inside-front-cover page where I can see Kubert pencils is "Zorro's Pistol" in FC 538.

I haven't seen FC
572, "Silvertip's Search," but like the rest of these it's attributed
to Kinstler, so it 's probably the 15th Kubert-and-Kinstler issue.
The art on the other Silvertip not listed here, FC 835,
"The False Riders," is by other hands.

As I was getting together these books out of order, it was after I'd
started this list that I found this 2013 comment from Josemas on Comics
Plus for FC
491: "Looks
like Kinstler had been studying Kubert
before doing this job."

Four
Color
Pencils by Joe Kubert
Inks by Everett
Raymond Kinstler and Kubert